{"id":215325,"date":"2025-06-26T07:44:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T07:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/215325\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T07:44:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T07:44:13","slug":"millions-of-over-60s-in-england-could-have-key-perk-scrapped-because-its-hard-to-justify","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/215325\/","title":{"rendered":"Millions of over-60s in England could have key perk scrapped because it&#8217;s &#8216;hard to justify&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Providing free transport for over-60s in London is costing taxpayers \u00a3500m a year, prompting calls for the benefit to be scrapped.<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_middle-aged.jpg\" alt=\"Providing free transport for over-60s in London is costing taxpayers \u00a3500m a year, prompting calls for the benefit to be scrapped.\" loading=\"eager\"  \/>Providing free transport for over-60s in London is costing taxpayers \u00a3500m a year, prompting calls for the benefit to be scrapped.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Over-60s could have a key perk scrapped with demands for the <a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.birminghammail.co.uk\/all-about\/labour-party\" target=\"\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">Labour Party<\/a> government to scrap free bus passes. Providing free transport for over-60s in London is costing taxpayers \u00a3500m a year, prompting calls for the benefit to be scrapped.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">The perk is handed to 1.5 million people who can now travel for free across London\u2019s buses, Tubes, trains and trams. They do so via the 60+ Oyster Card, for those aged between 60 and 65, and the Freedom Pass, available to those aged 66 and older.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">The 60+ Oyster Card alone will cost Transport for London (TfL) \u00a3135m this year, up from \u00a360m in 2016. The Freedom Pass, which now has more than 900,000 users, costs \u00a3350m a year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \"><a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.birminghammail.co.uk\/whats-on\/shopping\/future-major-uk-high-street-31935572\" target=\"_self\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong class=\"Strong_strong__e2x35\">READ MORE Future of major UK high street chain with 281 shops in doubt<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Reem Ibrahim, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: \u201cIt is difficult to justify a system where the wealthiest age group in the country is having their travel funded by taxpayers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">\u201cThe 60+ Oyster card and Freedom Pass schemes are financially unsustainable, and are not targeted to those genuinely in need of support. We urgently need a more targeted approach, rather than entrenching an unfair and costly system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Liz Emerson, chief executive of the Intergenerational Foundation, a research charity, said: \u201cAt the very least, the Freedom Pass should be aligned with the state pension age.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">\u201cIt\u2019s a perfect example of intergenerational unfairness at work with younger workers having to subsidise their older colleagues free travel to work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">TfL figures show that 60 per cent of people with a 50+ Oyster card are still in paid employment and one in five use the bus pass to get to or from work.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">A spokesman for Transport for London said: \u201cBoth the Mayor and TfL are committed to making public transport in London as accessible, convenient, and affordable as possible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">\u201cWe regularly review our range of concessions to ensure that they continue to benefit Londoners, while also remaining affordable for TfL to operate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Providing free transport for over-60s in London is costing taxpayers \u00a3500m a year, prompting calls for the benefit&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,393,4884,8955,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-215325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-midlands-traffic-and-travel","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114748553185865682","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}